Tucker Carlson: Men Think Sexual Harassment Is Awesome!

Last week, on the day Fox’s new show, "Outnumbered," premiered, co-host Tucker Carlson introduced a segment about Felicia Smith, a middle school teacher who was criminally charged after giving a 15 year-old student a lap dance for his birthday. Carlson had a huge problem with her arrest and even argued that that was a dream come true for a teenage boy - that women should try to understand, rather than the other way around.

For those of you who aren’t aware, the concept of “Outnumbered,” is one man and four women put together in a studio - presumably because that’s Fox's idea of a balanced debate between the sexes. But that's only a small hint of the sexism that followed.

After setting up the discussion, Carlson said: "You know, I think legitimate opinion divides whether this was appropriate for the classroom or not.” As the ladies gasped with disbelief, he held up a hand and insisted that they let him finish.

“There are people out there who believe that there ought to be criminal sanctions brought against this woman, and I think that’s deranged. …There’s no victim here. …This isn’t a crime.

…There’s a 15 year-old boy…and having been a 15 year-old boy, I can tell you that, unless there’s something we don’t know about this, this kid’s life is not being put in danger. He’s not a victim. This is the dream of a 15 year-old boy.

After predictable outrage from the women, Carlson argued that he wasn’t defending the teacher, because he doesn’t want this “non-crime” in his kids’ school, but we should “spare the outrage.”

Even after co-host Kimberly Guilfoyle pointed out that the lap dance included the teacher putting her head between the student’s legs, Carlson stuck to his “not a crime” argument. So co-host Harris Faulkner asked how he’d feel if a male teacher had behaved this way with one of his daughters. Carlson thought that was different. “The difference is they’re girls, and girls react differently to this kind of thing,” he said.

The panel argued for the rest of the segment.

Yesterday, the gang revisited the issue. Faulkner read some viewer feedback: two from disapproving women and one penned by a man arguing he would be “hard pressed to find a 15-to-17-year-old boy that doesn’t dream of being seduced by a hot teacher.” After taking a swipe at Smith’s looks, Faulkner prompted Carlson to explain himself again.

“I said it because it’s true,” he replied bluntly. This time, his co-hosts laughed at him as such a fun guy. He continued:

The women are upset, and the man understands. And here’s the bottom line: A 15 year-old boy is not a 15 year-old girl, and so - and I got a lot of mail about this. Every man understands this, a 15 year-old boy looks at this as like the greatest thing that ever happened, and I think for a 15 year-old girl… It would be traumatic. And that’s just real - I don’t know what to say. I don’t want that to be true, but it is true. ...I’m merely saying when a teacher gets so enthusiastic that she breaks out into a lap dance for it, don’t send her to prison. That’s all I’m saying.”

As disgusting as Carlson’s remarks were, they shouldn’t really surprise anyone. Outnumbered is clearly designed to titillate men. As Media Matters observed:

Outnumbered …doesn’t depart from Ailes’ trademark exploitation of Fox women—immediately evident in the no-pants dress code thus far for female anchors, whose legs are on prominent display and nearly always crossed toward the male guest du jour, known to the Twittersphere as #OneLuckyGuy.

…Nearly all of Fox’s purported news programs churn with an undercurrent of sexism. But with Outnumbered, the network drops the veil. It’s more a parody of a news program, devoting the vast majority of the first week to decidedly non-news, fluff stories that highlight stereotypical altercations or disparities between the sexes.

So while I thought Carlson’s behavior was so disgusting he should have lost his job on the spot, it was clearly exactly the kind of thing Fox News had in mind. Otherwise, they wouldn’t have had him go through the same routine twice.

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While it is POSSIBLE, you are not a paid troll and just a complete asshole, please know that it’s hard to believe your obviously-designed-to-annoy comments could be anything but bogus. Not counting the ones you cribbed from elsewhere and pretended were your own or your (unbelievable) claim to have voted for Obama and your later claim to be 17.

You haven’t broken any rules so I’ll let you stay. But I’m deleting your disgusting comment on this thread and putting you on notice – in case you’ve missed it – that we are on to you.

Likewise, I will advise our readers now and from time to time that they should ignore everything you say.

Obviously, there are a lot more teenaged guys realizing they’re gay so it only stands to reason that these young men would (or probably should) harbor the same type of sexual feelings and fantasies about male teachers. Would fTucker be as sympathetic to a situation (and an incredibly hypothetical one at that) wherein an openly bi or gay male teacher becomes involved with one of his gay male students? Even in a situation where the student is as willing and eager a participant as fTucker imagines in the heterosexual counterpart?

Something tells me that fTucker would be leading the lynch mob against the teacher (even if the teacher had been the penetratee during the encounter/s).

That left me gasping, too. But I do think the whole thing was scripted.

Until the Second World War, men were expected to have sexual experiences and some fathers actually took their sons to a brothel to get some (experience). At the same time, girls were kept under close surveillance (often confined to a convent) to make sure they would have no experience at all until they married. Ailes probably wrote Tucker’s script personally because that visit to the whorehouse has stuck in his mind.

While I think that Tucker should be deeply embarrassed, I wouldn’t be surprised if he negotiated a fat bonus for talking like a dirty old man.

This is so gross. But the hype is exactly what Ailes was counting on when he and his minions set this debate up. Carlson prob read his lines from a TelePrompTer (which fox hosts have been known to do before).